â€œRamadan,â€ said President Obama at a White House iftar dinner in 2010, â€œis a reminder that Islam has always been a part of America. The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan â€” making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago.â€

The dinner to which the president referred took place on December 9, 1805, and Jeffersonâ€™s guest was Sidi Soliman Mellimelli, an envoy from the bey (chieftain) of Tunis who spent six months in Washington. The context of Mellimelliâ€™s visit to the United States was a tense dispute over piracy on American merchant vessels by the Barbary states and the capture of Tunisian vessels trying to run an American blockade of Tripoli.

Mellimelli arrived during Ramadan, and Jefferson, when he invited the envoy to the presidentâ€™s house, changed the meal time from the usual hour of 3:30 p.m. to â€œprecisely at sunsetâ€ in deference to the manâ€™s religious obligation.

Jeffersonâ€™s knowledge of Islam likely came from his legal studies of natural law. In 1765, Jefferson purchased a two-volume English translation of the Quran for his personal library, a collection that became, in 1815, the basis of the modern Library of Congress.

One comment

Rashad Jafer

August 11, 2011 at 6:14 pm

The Quran that Thomas Jefferson purchased was a translation by George Sale , a British nobleman, done in 1736. That translation, even now. is considered to be extremely authentic. Infact, it was the first Arabic to English translation done until Moulvi Mohammed Ali did one in 1906.